And they released this quote-unquote report in April of 2021 with their findings. Because thats not how we understand poverty. Period." So those questions really came later. But I guess I cant say for sure. Fine. And its no offense its not like the most profound . Her mother was a doctor and Fierceton attended a prep school, but she was. And so I did definitely have that kind of like: I have no idea what else is going to convince these people. [2], Fierceton moved into the first of several foster homes, with one other foster sibling and two biological children of the foster parents. And how much confidence do you have that that anonymous complainer was Carrie, your biological mother. He explained that Morrison had had no prior criminal record, Fierceton's complaints about her mother's boyfriend and prescription drug abuse had been unsubstantiated, her cousin had witnessed no abuse while living with the Morrisons at a time prior to the incident, and he had learned that Fierceton "had regular temper tantrums, beyond the normal range for an adolescent". January 7, 2022. That they would forward charges to the federal government of wire fraud. Our producer is Zach Young. [4] After gathering all the evidence, they approached Driver's widow, Roxanne Logan, who had not been informed of the accessibility issues and delays involved in her husband's death; in fact she had been given the impression he had been evacuated from the building almost as soon as he began experiencing symptoms. Cause then you cant think that it could be you. And you experienced that yourself, right? Her mother had no explanation for the injuries, other than saying perhaps she had done it to herself. . Just a quick circling back, Im actually not sure if it was her who first reached out or if it was General Counsel Wendy White, because I later found out that they had a phone call about 36 hours after the article came out and seemed to talk pretty extensively, and then there were a lot of emails that happened. I didnt encounter many of them in the two years that I was living in foster families. Penn's admissions department thus automatically coded Fierceton as a first-generation student, a category it was seeking to increase among its undergraduate population, even though her mother had an advanced degree[2] and her grandfather was a college graduate who had taught at the University of Missouri. Mackenzie told the police her mother had pushed her down the stairs and struck her in the face. Fierceton. And I asked again and just said: Ive had different experiences of harassment for the last four years at Penn. Fine. She began to realize that she had no sense of identity. Or was the real issue that Fierceton did not really fit the profile of a suffering student who needed the benevolence of an Ivy League school?" It didnt, though, to the University of Pennsylvania. "[2], On her application, Fierceton recounted her background and the unexpected way it led to her becoming a foster child. But I just had a bad feeling and I started to try to find more information. Teachers and parents at Whitfield had donated new clothing and school supplies for her. Mackenzie Fierceton was named Penn's 2021 Rhodes Scholar. It recommended the scholarship be rescinded. ", "Inside Mackenzie Fierceton's ongoing legal battle with the University", "Mackenzie Fierceton Sets the Record Straight on Losing a Rhodes Scholarship Over Accusations of 'Dishonesty', "Penn community rallies in support of former Rhodes Scholar Mackenzie Fierceton", "Universities must stop fetishizing trauma", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mackenzie_Fierceton&oldid=1138496124, controversy over representation of childhood and abuse, This page was last edited on 10 February 2023, at 00:35. At first she explained Fierceton's injuries as either having been caused by an intruder or somehow self-inflicted, then said her daughter had fallen downstairs while she was trying to help her get some chewing gum out of her hair. RG: Yeah. She was . RG: as a kid. In addition to the complaint she had made against Lovelace, a similar complaint to police that her mother was abusing prescription drugs also did not yield any evidence to support it. [Laughs.]. Those investigations revealed that for the first 17 years of her life, Fierceton was raised by her mother, Dr. Carrie Morrison, an accomplished physician. I took photos of the building and sent it to them, and I was connecting them with different people who were in my class, who were in his class. But that was definitely a driving force for why I decided, ultimately, to withdraw because I felt like: OK, federal prison is no joke. MF: Just a quick circling back, Im actually not sure if it was her who first reached out or if it was General Counsel Wendy White, because I later found out that they had a phone call about 36 hours after the article came out and seemed to talk pretty extensively, and then there were a lot of emails that happened. What was the response from the readers of the paper? [2], Two months later the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. But it was just kind of this rapid fire of: If we look at your medical records, are we going to see you had broken ribs and severe facial injuries? She also alleged that Penn had on many occasions failed to follow its own disciplinary policies in its investigation of her.[16]. And it was also the community was kind of divided. And then I remembered that my teacher had told me to write a gratitude list. And at the time I was more in panic mode than like, let me step back and look at this logically, theres absolutely no case, this is an intimidation tactic to try to silence me and sign this NDA and withdraw from the Rhodes and agree to whatever terms they wanted me to agree to you. But she says she occasionally received packages at her dorm room containing objects she suspected had come from her mother, such as a bracelet with an inscription about finding the truth, or others close to her, such as a pair of sneakers, which she believed Lovelace, who had sometimes helped her stretch before workouts, had sent. Fierceton grew up in a wealthy community and attended an elite private school in a St. Louis suburb. In The New Yorker article, one teacher had written: She showed up at my classroom door with a bloodied and battered face and then fainted., RG: And then, Rachel Aviv, the reporter also quotes Sherry McClain, who was a nurse who was assigned to you, she said: She had two black eyes, and her hair was full of blood. And eventually they filed a big wrongful death lawsuit in August 2020. RG: And so when you applied for your masters in social worker or sociology? Mackenzie Morrison was born Mackenzie Terrell but took her mother's name after her father, Billy Terrell, who worked in soap operas, left. MF: So to me it was pretty clear that it likely came from them. And in the U.S., there is much more pressure to pull kids out of homes, right? Like there is more attention to systemic poverty and trying to keep children in their homes to begin with, I would say, which is important, because if you can keep kids in their homes, then theyre not in the system and facing that foster-to-prison pipeline. So I felt pretty confident. Teen Mom alum Mackenzie Edwards' husband Ryan Edwards is to be arrested soon. The kind of reporting we do is essential to democracy, but it is not easy, cheap, or profitable. RG: Thats been my understanding of it. RG: in America. RG: Right. Uh, my lawyer. RG: Mhmm. Why were you in the hospital that long? So that was what that specific sentence in The New Yorker was referencing is this kind of condensing this group of people and to one sentence. 207 1,590 6,062 Show this thread Mackenzie Fierceton @MFierceton Aug 8 Will never not make my day to see this on the shelf. A trial was held in early 2019 at which she, Fierceton, a psychologist and a DSS investigator testified. Because that was one of the ones that really blew my mind. RG: That was Mackenzie Fierceton and thats our show. And then theres the part that felt like: I have no idea whats going to convince these people if I gave them medical records, I gave them forensic photos of me taken in the hospital, I gave them again like corroboration from professors of like how I described myself, from leaders in the FIGLY community. so that people have the background there. And then again there was trouble getting him out of the basement. And to me, Im like I am a household of one, so I am the only person in my family. In addition to reiterating many of the themes of comments made by her and her supporters in the previous articles, including criticism of the Rhodes and Penn investigations (the former of which Grim noted she was putting air quotes around when she mentioned it), she expressed a belief that her story had triggered a defensive anxiety in women like Finkelstein and White:[4]. [5] She posted it before Fierceton's release from the hospital, and once free began calling Fierceton's friends and former teachers, telling them that Fierceton was having issues and had made it appear Morrison had beaten her. If you want to give us additional feedback, email us at. She recalled showing up at the foster home with her new clothes in a plastic bag, feeling "like a passenger in my own body", she recalled later. It's from there the story unraveled. The reporter had assumed based on her status as a FGLI student which stands for first-generation, low-income that she had been poor her entire life. I have some of my own theories, but I want to hear yours. RG: And so if its a well-educated white girl from a private school, thats way too close to home for a lot of these elites. And I turned over all this information to his widow. And its no offense its not like the most profound . Yeah. After a teacher reported what they felt was abuse, a social worker came by and your mother was able to just charm the pants off her. Because processes become Kafkaesque very quickly. Enough bruises? And Im glad that people are having the kinds of systemic discussions that are so key to all of this. This definition resembles the one used in the federal Higher Education Act, which says that first-generation status depends on the education level of a parent whom a student regularly resided with and received support from.. Picture: University of Pennsylvania/Instagram. Mackenzie Fierceton described herself as s a "queer,. Deconstructed[emailprotected]theintercept.com, Photo illustration: Soohee Cho for The Intercept; Getty Images, AP, This weeks guest on Deconstructed is Mackenzie Fierceton, who was the subject of, The Philadelphia Inquirer erroneously wrote that she had grown up poor. Within a year of her arrest, another St. Louis-area hospital had granted her admitting privileges, and she was able to resume her medical career. Am I right about that? And they were the ones I believe and this is public now because Penn attached it to their response to the lawsuit I filed and I believe they were the first ones to mention that I had gone to private school and that they were questioning if I was low-income. And that feels like one of them where it feels like the system is willfully misunderstanding reality in order to bend it in their direction. And thats an unfortunate reality so many survivors experience, not having a lot of documentation. Like, it seemed like an airtight case from my perspective. [2], In December 2021 Fierceton retained another lawyer pro bono and filed her own suit against Penn, alleging that the university's investigations into her history and how she had represented herself was a "sham", undertaken with the intent of forcing her to withdraw from the Rhodes Scholarship and damaging her credibility as a witness in the Driver suit, constituting tortious interference with a business relationship and intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress. And it started with, this paragraph-and-a-half of waking up in the hospital and then, like you said, looking at my face, not recognizing myself, and kind of describing what I felt like and what the room looked like. Yes. And please go and leave us a rating or a review it helps people find the show. And at the time I was like: Why what? MF: Yeah. And how much did she challenge your medical condition after that beating? And, in this case, almost everyone who was involved in the university administration are upper middle class or very wealthy, highly academically educated white women. It didnt have any facts of the case. The court granted Morrison a protection order against her former husband; Fierceton had no relationship with him from that time onward. Theres a lot of chaos. I do think that it is a huge defense mechanism that people deploy. And I think its striking to read that back and just see how clearly distressed and distraught I was in continuing to push on that series of questions about a really traumatic experience. Her supporters at Penn have called for the university's acting provost, Beth Winkelstein, to be held accountable for her role in the investigation, which has been characterized as a continuation of the abuse. And even now, The New Yorker quotes a lot from my childhood journals describing my abuse. What foster family were you with in X,Y, Z year? So one question was: Are you from a low-income family? Mackenzie Fierceton grew up poor, cycling through the rocky child welfare system. MF: You know, in my personal experience, there were not very many kids who came from a background like me. [2], At the beginning of April,[5] after she came to school with a black eye that showed through the concealer she put over it, she was taken to see the wellness director, who asked what had happened. Like you said, I was called into a meeting. And do you know Linda Tirado? Morrison told White in an email. So one of the questions that you mentioned that they asked was about your essay , which, correct me if Im wrong, but I think it begins saying something along the lines of: Youre in the hospital, you looked in the mirror, and you couldnt recognize yourself, you couldnt recognize your features. She entered foster care only at the age of 17, after making a complaint of abuse against Dr.. So the Rhodes Trust ended up after their quote-investigation, and I submitted all the evidence, they ended up still recommending that my scholarship be rescinded, uh, but I had another opportunity to respond to their report, which I absolutely wanted to do. Her junior year at Whitfield, a prestigious prep school, Mackenzie showed up to school one day in a terrible state. Mackenzie Fierceton was deposed after seeking justice for a mature student, Cameron Driver, 38. He died of his heart attack within 12 minutes of arrival at the hospital. [2] Katie Couric had Fierceton as a guest on her podcast a week later. A University of Pennsylvania May graduate who is currently completing her master's degree at Penn has been awarded a Rhodes Scholarship for graduate study at the University of Oxford.. Penn's 2021 Rhodes Scholar is Mackenzie Fierceton from St. Louis, currently residing in Philadelphia. I didnt even really think about it when I checked it, because I felt like I had a lot of information that backed it up. Like one of them was describing a biological child in a house as another foster child, and something about a half-brother or something.What were those and how were those errors kind of deployed against you? In its response to Fierceton's lawsuit, the university says its general counsel talked with Hayes, who said that bringing the charges had been the "biggest mistake" of his career. I really appreciate it. I tried to help as much as I could. Its account focused on the Rhodes controversy, discussing her and Driver's suits near the end, and recalling some other recent instances of academic dishonesty, including one 2009 Harvard student whose largely fabricated high school records were only discovered when he had applied for a Rhodes Scholarship. And it has, has she stuck by that? They took photographs of Caster's staircases and elevators, and interviewed witnesses and some of the Penn paramedics who had responded. And what was the first-generation community like on campus? [c] Chewing was difficult as well, and she had a feeding tube inserted. And I started interviewing people who were in the class where he died and who were in nearby classes where he died, who knew him, and paramedics who were Penn paramedics and just as many people as I could. Fierceton was mentioned in the complaint as having experienced similar issues following her seizure; she was deposed in the suit in March 2021, the month before the university's investigation led her to withdraw from the Rhodes Scholarship. [2], Over the middle of 2020, Fierceton became active in the Black Lives Matter protests at Penn. I think youre right. Because that was one of the ones that really blew my mind. And you experienced that yourself, right? [22] It went into greater detail about her past, providing more substantiation for her abuse allegations from teachers, fellow students and their parents, Carrie Brandt (the police detective who had investigated and arrested Morrison) and her allegations that Morrison had enabled Lovelace's sexual abuse. And youre getting instruction from a university official that that's how you're supposed to fill it out, that's what the definition says online. Its practically half of Americans, or more. She helped SP2 assistant professor Toorjo Ghose draft and promote a petition in support of Police Free Penn, an activist group calling on the university to cut its ties with the Philadelphia Police Department over its poor relations with the largely black and Latin residents of the West Philadelphia neighborhoods around the university's campus, and rethink its own police department, the largest private one in the state. And where are you at school? Penn, she claimed, had leaked that information to the Inquirer whose editor-in-chief was married to Louisa Shepard, the university's news director, whom she named as a defendant along with Finkelstein, White, and the university's board of trustees. And then instantly people started picking her story apart. [2], Local police were called. Penn also noted that her name change had the effect, whether she had intended it or not, of making her background harder to research. [2][5] It did not disclose that it had done so until March. She felt as if it might have been an attempt to intimidate her. That is when I would trace it back to. So how is a person who is filling out this application supposed to know what definition youre supposed to use? [2], A week later, Fierceton received an email asking her to attend a meeting over Zoom with Winkelstein. Some people were very much on my side; some people were very much, I think, in that sort of cognitive dissonance of: This cant be true because if it can, then Im in danger. [Laughs.] RG: Or whatever our kind of contemporary version of it is. students, defines first generation broadly, including students who have a strained or limited relationship with a parent who has graduated from college. Fierceton said later that she had never used the word "poor" to describe herself or her childhood. Theyre not on a website. It, too, alleged that Fierceton was misrepresenting herself as having been poor and grown up entirely in foster care, with many photos of Fierceton as a little girl on the beach and riding horses, and other activities usually associated with affluence. And I didnt really know any information, except for that he had had a medical emergency in class and then been pronounced dead at the hospital. And it just felt pretty devastating to me, because for so long I hid everything, Id been so ashamed, and I already felt so much guilt in coming forward then. [7] The charges against Lovelace were dropped later for lack of evidence. And I think its true. Youre engaged in a lawsuit with Penn. RG: And one of the main things they pointed to was that she had gone to this private school . And what area of it are you going to explore with your Ph.D.? Deconstructed is a production of First Look Media and The Intercept. [24], In a statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian, the university said the New Yorker article "did not accurately reflect" the university's investigation of the issues raised by the Rhodes Trust. And so where is your story now? And then to be so unanimously disbelieved and, at that point, this article was like a paragraph and a half. But while OSC allowed that it may not have been Fierceton's explicit intent to deceive, she had still done so, particularly when checking "yes" on the question on her SP2 application as to whether she was the first in her family to attend college (Fierceton stands by her reliance on Penn's definitions of FGLI on the Penn Plus website and the applicable federal laws; the university says that question is "composed of ordinary words with everyday meanings, and it makes no reference to any term or definition appearing in any other publication. [2], At the end of 2013, in the middle of her sophomore year, Fierceton was admitted to St. Luke's, where her mother worked, with a head injury. First of all, thats one box? Both reports refrained from expressing an opinion about the truth of her abuse allegations. My life is over, Im in the hospital, Im at rock bottom. I identify with the FGLI umbrella term and definitely being a low-income student, but I've never really called myself a standalone first-generation. And we do know for sure that she was in touch with the university. And I ended up reading the comments, and the comments were just horrendous. "[25], "I cannot avoid the sense that Mackenzie is being faulted for not having suffered enough", Norton told The New Yorker. The reporter had assumed based on her status as a FGLI student which stands for first-generation, low-income that she had been poor her entire life. Our concern is instead with the conduct of our. If youd like to support our work, go to theintercept.com/give your donation, no matter what the amount, makes a real difference. [2] Fierceton and her mentor reconstructed the conversation and transcribed it; the university has claimed it is inaccurate but the mentor stands by it. Mackenzie went to a private prep school, Whitfield, in St. Louis and was an active student. She lost consciousness and was taken to the hospital, where she spent three days in intensive care. She retained two lawyers to represent her pro bono; they talked to Morrison themselves, who told them she still loved her daughter and wanted her to come home. So I could imagine why at some point youd be like, you know what, Im just not going to keep taking Ls here. And then theres also foster siblings in the sense of other people who are in the foster care system who youre living with. Our greatest desire is that Mackenzie chooses to live a happy, healthy, honest, and productive life, using her extraordinary gifts for the highest good." RG: And do you know Linda Tirado? I identify with the FGLI umbrella term and definitely being a low-income student, but Ive never really called myself a standalone first-generation. A graduate student named Mackenzie Fierceton was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship by the University of Pennsylvania in 2020 only to have it stripped from her a few months later after allegations. But when youre filling out a box where its yes or no and theres no more information or kind of! box [laughs], its like you have to fit yourself in, saying: Are you the first in your family to attend? But Mackenzie Fierceton is not a liar. In May 2022, after a lengthy article in The New Yorker drew widespread media attention to Fierceton's story, the university dropped the charge and awarded her the degree. And so I was like, of course, Im going to respond again. As in Fierceton's case, it took an hour to remove Driver from the building. While the investigators understood, they also wrote that the limited information she provided may have been more likely to elicit an answer favorable to her. RG: Like questioning: How much blood? "[12] Gutmann, soon to step down from her position to serve as U.S. ambassador to Germany, had made increasing the amount of FGLI students at Penn a priority in her previous 17 years as the university's president. Is that your experience with it as well? And I havent been on any of the Penn websites. Fierceton clarified the details in question and Ruderman said she understood better. But part of it is funding decisions. Again, this is obviously secondhand, because I was unconscious. RG: And so, like I mentioned earlier, I dont want to go over too much of the history that led up to your battle with Penn and with the Rhodes trust, because people can find that in The New Yorker article that came out recently, you went over that in some pretty decent length; in Katie Courics podcast in a recent interview there. How many people kind of fit that category that you interacted with, and how many kind of fit closer to your category, not just in your own interactions, but also in your research? Seeing other students consult their parents for minor decisions made her feel left out; she avoided telling people she had been in foster care before college. MF: Yeah. Mackenzie Fierceton, a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, has won the prestigious and extremely competitive Rhodes Scholarship, which will allow her to study at Oxford in November 2020. If you enjoy this podcast, be sure to also check out Intercepted as well as Murderville, which is now in its second season. And how much confidence do you have that that anonymous complainer was Carrie, your biological mother. It quotes her as saying "If you find me dead, it was my mom. "I advised him that this was ridiculous, and this had to be a 'status thing", she said. So Rachel had it and Penn disputed it. The teen said she was sent to. A cousin who lived with the Morrisons for a while did not see any signs of abuse and believed it was possible Fierceton could have inflicted the injuries herself. Its just so obvious that you fit the criteria for low-income, but it seems like they feel like you dont fit it in the spirit of how they want it. The Inquirer story came out in November 2020. According to Fierceton, her mother pushed her down the stairs and then beat her extensively at the bottom. By those standards, the standards of real family, not one person I'm related to by blood meets those requirements or even comes close." RG: So one of the questions that you mentioned that they asked was about your essay , RG: which, correct me if Im wrong, but I think it begins saying something along the lines of: Youre in the hospital, you looked in the mirror, and you couldnt recognize yourself, you couldnt recognize your features. She, about 10 years ago, she wrote a comment I think on a Gawker post or something like that that we ended up then re-publishing as an essay at The Huffington Post about, and it was about her life in poverty, and it went viral, millions of people read it, extremely well-written piece. RG: So I could imagine why at some point youd be like, you know what, Im just not going to keep taking Ls here. And then throughout the now a year and a half process [laughs] of different sort of invented processes that happened, eventually the university was like: OK, I guess shes low-income. And thats an unfortunate reality so many survivors experience, not having a lot of documentation. And we have our own specific grad school definitions. And like: Why are you considered an independent student? Just like some basic questions [laughs] and then a lot of detailed questions about my application. There were some pretty basic errors, such as my name, my birth name, and my birth place, and claiming that I didnt have a sibling, that I wasnt low-income, a lot of facts that were pretty easily disputed. RG: I want to talk about where you think that pushback came from. What kind of a group is that? And like you said, like, yes, obviously I was looking in a mirror, and I knew I was looking in a mirror. When they did, they were unable to get stretchers or backboards down Caster's stairways or elevators as there was insufficient space. Thats not in question. MF: Yeah, it was, things like that where I simplified all of these foster kids that youre living with a biological family who have kids, which I would say are foster siblings. Mackenzie, for her part, was accepted to the University of Pennsylvania and, in her sophomore year, won a Rhodes Scholarship. And I kind of felt like things were resolved until the next week when there was more [laughs] more downhill event. And so when you applied for your masters in social worker or sociology? "I think that we could contribute to the community, the broader Philadelphia community, and the West Philadelphia community more positively, instead of doing things that are not only undermining them but are actively policing them, and end up creating and perpetuating more violence," she told The Daily Pennsylvanian, the university's student newspaper.